Steve Knight

Final thoughts from the Toyota Texas Bass Classic on Lake Fork:

There are those who like to say that professional bass fishing shouldn't be considered a sport. All I can say is - try it.

Sure bass fishing isn't one of the collision sports, such as football, or contact sports, such as basketball, that for some reason have come to define a sport today.

But if sport is defined as some that requires skill, physical stamina and intelligence, then add pro fishing to the list.

Forget the fact that both major tours are televised on the two major national sports networks, because so is poker. And no it isn't what has evolved into the made-for-television events that have become professional football, basketball, hockey or NASCAR, but they did wreck enough boats on the stumps at Lake Fork to make it interesting.

Pro fishing likes to compare itself to NASCAR, but the truth is other than the brightly wrapped boats, the walking billboard shirts and the propensity to drop a sponsor's name into any sentence, there isn't much similarity.

First of all, auto racing is a spectator sport. The only ones watching a fisherman fish are those who launch their own boats and follow them around the water. Surprisingly that is common and it creates an interesting interaction between fan and competitor seen no where else. It could happen in golf, but I don't see Tiger visiting with the gallery as he hits a shot.

The other thing that makes fishing and auto racing different is that the race car drivers belong to a team, which guarantees them a paycheck at the end of the day despite where they finish. They also often travel by plane from race to race while their boat and pit crew follow on land in tractor-trailer rigs.

Fishermen are independent contractors. Finish too far down the list in a tournament and it's time to max the credit card again to get to the next event. In comparison to NASCAR, the fishermen drive their own trucks; pull their boats and stay in cheap motels or lakeside cabins. On the top level, a pro fisherman can easily rack up 50,000-plus miles a year traveling between events.

Those fishing the Bassmaster Elite Series were on Falcon Lake three weekends ago, Amistad two weekends ago and at the TTBC Tuesday through Sunday. After a week's rest, the field heads to Georgia.

There were others who left the tournament Sunday for a practice round Monday in North Carolina.

And that is where the stamina kicks in. The TTBC was supposed to be a fun event since it was put on by the anglers and not a part of any tour. The fishermen were allowed to practice Tuesday and Wednesday, fish a pro-am Thursday and began competition Friday.

Practice day for most, like regular competition days, started before daylight and ended at dark. At that point the fisherman has to eat, get gas in the boat and rig equipment for the next day.

On the water they fish whether it is cold, raining or hot. The only time a tournament is halted is when the wind makes the lake unsafe.

The fishermen also have to know what they are doing. They have to know how to handle their boat while fishing, be able to read the electronics and know how to fish every piece of equipment imaginable.

Walking down the ramp during the tournament you could look into a boat and see rods rigged with soft plastics, jigs, jigs and soft plastics, swim baits, crankbaits, spinners and Chatterbait-type lures.

Runner-up captain Bobby Lane, of Lakeland, Fla., found he was more successful fishing deep-diving crankbaits using a longer rod than the one with which he started. Winning captain Kelly Jordon, of Mineola, got his Lucky Craft splatter pattern crankbait to the bottom strolling, a technique using the trolling motor to drag the lure deep behind the boat.

And they take it seriously. Sure there are still a lot of Bubbas in bass fishing, but these aren't your dumb Bubbas. These guys approach it as a business. With entry fees up to $5,000 and first-place prizes of $100,000, they can't afford not to.

OK, bass fishermen may not run a 4.5 in the 40 or dunk a basketball, but I doubt an NFL lineman could spend six days under extreme conditions on a boat fishing for his check.

The second thing is that while the tournament has been fun at Lake Fork; don't look for it to be there next spring.

The official announcement on where the tournament will be held won't be made for several months, but the talk around Lake Fork last week was that there will be a move to Lake Conroe.The initial idea of the TTBC was to give pro fishermen a chance to compete on Fork. That has been done, and successfully.

Now that it looks as if the event will be an annual thing, the goal is shifting to make it profitable. The first year was a perfect promotion for Toyota with its new made-in-Texas truck line.

But putting on the event is expensive. One big name music act (Trace Adkins) helped draw a good crowd on Saturday, but the numbers fell off on Sunday even with another headliner (Robert Earl Keen) on stage. Move it to a suburb of Houston and your potential audience jumps from hundreds of thousands to millions.

The tradeoff is that fishing won't be as good. Conroe is a nice lake, but it isn't any Lake Fork.

This doesn't mean the event won't come back to East Texas sometime in the future, but odds are it won't be for a couple of years.

THE WINNERS ARE ...: The Toyota Texas Bass Classic winning team of Lance Vick, Kelly Jordon, David Walker and David Smith celebrate like they just won the Super Bowl. Pro anglers deserve to be called athletes.
(Staff Photo By Steve Knight)